[Ed. note: The following contains spoilers for Fallout season 1.]
When the credit roll on Fallout season 1’s finale, dangerous dad Hank MacLean (Kyle MacLachlan) is trudging towards a metropolis on the Wasteland horizon. It’s not simply any metropolis, both. It’s New Vegas — an iconic locale from the Prime Video present’s online game supply materials (primarily the aptly named Fallout: New Vegas). So it appears to be like like post-apocalyptic casinos and Hoover Dam firefights are coming our method in Fallout season 2.
Each are price getting hyped over — as are the various different superficial delights of the New Vegas setting. But there’s one other, deeper motive to get enthusiastic about Fallout hitting the Strip for its subsequent batch of episodes. If the video games are any information, shifting the present’s focus to New Vegas also needs to open up its underlying ethical framework. Certainly, New Vegas’ brilliant neon lights may provide the shades of grey the live-action Fallout is at present lacking.
Don’t get me unsuitable: Fallout season 1 has loads of ethical ambiguity — simply on a person degree. Lucy MacLean (Ella Purnell), Maximus (Aaron Moten), and even The Ghoul (Walton Goggins) are recurrently compelled to decide on between what’s proper, what’s simple, and what feels good in an uncaring world that seemingly has no desire. The identical doesn’t actually apply to how season 1 treats Fallout’s varied factions, although.
Certain, the Brotherhood of Metal is a little bit of a combined bag, and Moldaver (Sarita Choudhury) and her New California Republic remnant’s strategies early on are… excessive. However, typically talking, Fallout season 1 is pretty clear on who its goodies and baddies are. Vault-Tec? Dangerous. The NCR? Good. And if we may eliminate the previous and get behind the latter, the Wasteland may very well be a Shady Sands-esque utopia, full with cold-fusion-powered avenue lamps and trams.
For Fallout season 1’s functions, this binary worldview works. It’s not even that a lot of a departure from a few of the faction-centric storytelling within the likes of Fallout 3 and Fallout 4. However it’s not precisely nuanced, both — even in a world with 200-year-old mutant gunslingers. Selecting a aspect is black and white; except you’re breaking out by yourself, it’s NCR or bust.
However the New Vegas milieu calls bullshit on that. True, the NCR is a greater outfit than most, however its report isn’t precisely spotless. It’s a bit land-grabby and has at the very least one Mojave Wasteland bloodbath in its closet. In the meantime, New Vegas’ different massive faction, ruthless Roman Empire cosplayers Caesar’s Legion — who should certainly present up in Fallout season 2 — engages in slavery. On the similar time, it additionally has a surprisingly well-articulated ethos rooted in serving the larger good, and takes some well-aimed jabs on the NCR’s shortcomings.
And within the center, there’s Mr. Home: the man who runs New Vegas itself, and who (as you would possibly count on from a lord of Vegas) retains his playing cards near his chest. He’s a self-described autocrat but in addition has a daring, progressive imaginative and prescient for New Vegas’ future. As such, realizing who to aspect with in Fallout: New Vegas is hard (apart from the slavers; you by no means aspect with slavers). Fallout season 2 will hopefully comply with swimsuit.
No matter what New Vegas’ established order is within the present’s 2296 setting — the video games don’t supply a canonical reply on whether or not the NCR, the Legion, or Home is at present calling the photographs — our protagonists are about to enter a world the place selecting groups has very actual trade-offs. It’s not so simple as taking down Vault-Tec and waving the NCR flag when you set foot in New Vegas. There are drawbacks to Lucy and firm aligning with any faction. Perhaps there are not any good factions, interval.
It’s a sobering situation — but in addition one that might take Fallout’s storytelling to a complete new degree in season 2. So what else is there to say, besides “Viva New Vegas”?
Fallout season 1 is now streaming on Prime Video.